Public Policy

Public Policy (PP) equips students to engage with the complex problems facing government at every level and to master and apply quantitative and qualitative techniques that enable students to understand their sources and to craft meaningful solutions to them. This subfield ranges broadly from understanding the overall structure and dynamics of policy development, policy implementation, and policy change to the interaction between public, private, and constituency actors to plumbing the depths of organizational behavior and measuring the efficiency and effectiveness of specific programs. Emphasis is given to the urban, American, and cross-national perspectives, with substantive strengths in urban policy, social policy, community development, health, racial, ethnic, gender, and immigrant inequalities. Students have the opportunity to study policy in the extraordinarily challenging sphere of New York City politics, using the city as a laboratory for studying larger processes. Many students in the subfield have career interests in government, nonprofit organizations, and political advocacy in addition to academia and the subfield seeks to build their leadership and analytical skills as they prepare for academic and/or public positions.